White House Rejects China-Brokered Ceasefire in Ukraine

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The Biden administration came out against China’s push for a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine, saying Thursday that a pause in fighting would work to Russia’s advantage.

Chinese President Xi Jinping intends to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an effort to broker a peace deal between the two nations, which have been at war for over a year after Russia’s invasion. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters the administration believes a ceasefire would work against Ukraine.

“While that sounds perfectly reasonable and it sounds like a good thing, a ceasefire right now would basically ratify Russia’s conquest. Russia would basically be free to use that ceasefire to further entrench its positions in Ukraine, to rebuild their forces, refit them, re-man them, retrain them so that they can then restart attacks at a time of their choosing.”

Kirby said the White House supports talks between Xi and Zelensky, but warned Beijing against adopting a stance that favors Russia.

Xi is scheduled to visit Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Chinese leader has also reportedly reached out to Zelensky, although details on that were also unclear. Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba in a Thursday phone call. (Read more from “White House Rejects China-Brokered Ceasefire in Ukraine” HERE)

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Escalation: Backed by U.S. And EU, Poland and Slovakia Sending Jets to Ukraine

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Russia has vowed to destroy all fighter jets donated to Ukraine by European nations after Poland and Slovakia, backed by new equipment and finance from the U.S. and the European Union, became the first countries to send warplanes to Kyiv.

Fighter jets have been a long-term demand for the Ukrainian government of Volodymyr Zelensky since the renewed Russian invasion at the start of 2022, but NATO leaders have shied away from what they considered a major escalation of their involvement in the conflict until now. Enabled by cash and replacement warbirds from the United States and the European Union, two European nations are sending fighter jets to Ukraine in the coming days.

The first to announce it was sending jets was Poland, whose airforce operates many former-Soviet fighters. Warsaw announced Thursday it would be sending the first tranche of Mikoyan MIG-29 ‘Fulcrum’ fighter jets, a 1980s-era type roughly originally built as a parallel to the U.S. F-16. While that delivery will run to four jets, Poland has dozens and is reportedly preparing others for delivery. . .

As has been the case with other major escalations in levels of support to Ukraine — the provision of main battle tanks, for instance, where months of refusals from NATO nations ended with a rush of donations after the United Kingdom opened the floodgates by being the first to supply — Poland making the jets announcement has been closely followed. Slovakia has now said it will send its entire airforce’s stock of MIG-29s as well in an announcement on Friday just hours after Poland’s. . .

Slovakia is also receiving considerable support from Western powers to make the donation possible. The European Union is making a contribution of $200 million to the Slovakian government in “compensation” for them losing their jets, and the United States has agreed to supply $700 million of new military equipment — likely American-made fighters like the F-35 — to replace them. (Read more from “Escalation: Backed by U.S. And EU, Poland and Slovakia Sending Jets to Ukraine” HERE)

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Poland Plans to Grant Ukraine’s Request for Fighter Jets

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Poland’s president said Thursday that his country plans to give Ukraine around a dozen MiG-29 fighter jets, which would make it the first NATO member to fulfill the Ukrainian government’s increasingly urgent requests for warplanes.

President Andrzej Duda said Poland would hand over four of the Soviet-made warplanes “within the next few days” and that the rest needed servicing and would be supplied later. The Polish word he used to describe their number can mean between 11 and 19.

“They are in the last years of their functioning but they are in good working condition,” Duda said of the aircraft. (Read more from “Poland Plans to Grant Ukraine’s Request for Fighter Jets” HERE)

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Blame Hillary and Obama: Tons of Uranium Concentrate Missing From Libya

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Some 2.5 tons of natural uranium stored in a site in war-torn Libya have gone missing, the United Nations nuclear watchdog said Thursday, raising safety and proliferation concerns.

Natural uranium can’t immediately be used for energy production or bomb fuel, as the enrichment process typically requires the metal to be converted into a gas, then later spun in centrifuges to reach the levels needed. However, each ton of natural uranium — if obtained by a group with the technological means and resources — can be refined to 5.6 kilograms of weapons-grade material over time, experts say. That makes finding the missing metal important for nonproliferation experts.

In a statement, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said its director-general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, informed member states Wednesday about the missing uranium. . .

Tuesday, “agency safeguards inspectors found that 10 drums containing approximately 2.5 tons of natural uranium in the form of uranium ore concentrate were not present as previously declared at a location in the state of Libya,” the IAEA said. . .

While inspectors removed the last of the enriched uranium from Libya in 2009, the yellowcake remained behind, with the U.N. in 2013 estimating some 6,400 barrels of it were stored at Sabha. American officials had worried Iran could try to purchase the uranium from Libya, something Qadhafi’s top civilian nuclear official tried to reassure the U.S. about, according to a 2009 diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks. (Read more from “Blame Hillary and Obama: Tons of Uranium Concentrate Missing From Libya” HERE)

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Xi Jinping: China Will Be ‘Active’ in Reforming ‘Global Governance’ (VIDEO)

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Genocidal Chinese dictator Xi Jinping vowed in a speech at the conclusion of China’s annual legislative sessions on Monday that the Communist Party would seek a more prominent role on the world stage pursuing the “reform and construction of the global governance system.”

China under his third tenure as president – to which he was unanimously “elected” by the National People’s Congress (NPC), the federal-level legislature, last week – Xi said, would work to “create a favorable international environment for our country’s development.”

Xi was speaking at the conclusion of the “two sessions” of the NPC and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which meet annually to draft new laws for the country. The Communist Party completely dominates both bodies and blocks any diversity of opinion; the Party typically prepares a slate or policy topics to address prior to the meeting.

(Read more from “Xi Jinping: China Will Be ‘Active’ in Reforming ‘Global Governance’ (VIDEO)” HERE)

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American Drone Taken Down by Russian Fighter Jet Over Black Sea

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The United States European Command said on Tuesday afternoon that a Russian jet had collided with an unmanned U.S. Air Force drone in international airspace over the Black Sea west of Crimea, a new twist in Russia’s bloody war against Ukraine that has seen significant aid from the United States but no direct contact between American and Russian forces.

According to EUCOM, “two Russian Su-27 aircraft conducted an unsafe and unprofessional intercept with a U.S. Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance unmanned MQ-9 aircraft that was operating within international airspace over the Black Sea” on Tuesday, causing “complete loss of the MQ-9.”

During the intercept, “one of the Russian Su-27 aircraft struck the propeller of the MQ-9, causing U.S. forces to have to bring the MQ-9 down in international waters,” EUCOM described. “Several times before the collision, the Su-27s dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ-9 in a reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner. This incident demonstrates a lack of competence in addition to being unsafe and unprofessional,” the military added.

(Read more from “American Drone Taken Down by Russian Fighter Jet Over Black Sea” HERE)

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Russia Launches ‘Massive’ Barrage Across Ukraine

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Dozens of Russian missiles rained down over several Ukrainian cities early Thursday in a massive attack.

The Ukrainian military said Russia launched more than 80 missiles of various types overnight and into the morning as far west as Lviv, which has largely been outside the confines of the war. The strikes targeted 10 of Ukraine’s 27 regions, Ukrainian President Volydmyr Zelensky said, and many hit residential buildings.

In Lviv, reports indicated at least five people were killed, while three others died in the Kherson region, another person was killed in the Dnipropetrovsk region, and two were killed in Donetsk. Strikes were also reported in Luhansk, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernihiv, Sumy, Zaporizhzhya, Kirovohrad, and Vinnytsia, according to CNN. Some regions lost electricity temporarily following the strikes.

Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, said the attacks consisted of 28 X-101/X-555 air-launched cruise missiles, 20 Kalibr sea-launched cruise missiles, six X-22 air-launched cruise missiles, six X-47 Kinzhal air-launched cruise missiles, eight guided aircraft missiles, including two X-31P and two X-59, 13 S-300 anti-aircraft guided missiles, and eight Iranian-made Shahed 136/131 drones. Ukraine was able to destroy 42 missiles and four drones. (Read more from “Russia Launches ‘Massive’ Barrage Across Ukraine” HERE)

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Remnants of Russian Platoon Refuse to Fight After ‘Bulls–t’ Mobilization to Donbas

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A Russian officer fighting in the Donbas region of Ukraine released a defiant video saying that he and whatever was left of his decimated platoon were refusing to follow orders after being forced to attack settlements without any training.

The recording, which spread on Telegram channels this week, shed light on the purported chaos within the ranks of Vladimir Putin’s draftees mobilized in Ukraine.

In the brief video, a man in a baseball cap who introduces himself as a senior lieutenant stands in front of a group of about 10 soldiers assembled in a bare room with a single light bulb hanging overhead and reads a statement from a sheet of paper.

“We were herded to attack villages absolutely without any training,” he says, adding that conscripts in their 40s were forced to fight “without reconnaissance, without communications, without scouting, without anything.”

The Post could not independently verify the video’s authenticity, and it’s unclear when or where it was recorded. (Read more from “Remnants of Russian Platoon Refuse to Fight After ‘Bulls–t’ Mobilization to Donbas” HERE)

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TikTok Whistleblower Says Chinese Communist Party Can Access American User Data

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A former employee of the company that controls TikTok told Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) that members of the Chinese Communist Party can access data from American users of the social media platform.

The allegations occur as TikTok, which is owned by Chinese technology company ByteDance, faces scrutiny for national security concerns and reported data privacy breaches. Hawley said in a letter sent to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday that employees, including members of the Chinese Communist Party who are on the company’s payroll, can allegedly switch between Chinese and American data with “nothing more than the click of a button.”

Workers allegedly use several proprietary software tools created in China that reduce foreign scrutiny and allow engineers to “insert software backdoors,” Hawley described on the basis of the unnamed whistleblower’s account. One such tool allegedly permits employees to access American data with the approval of a manager and a dataset owner.

“I have seen first-hand China-based engineers flipping over to non-China datasets and creating scheduled tasks to backup, aggregate, and analyze data,” the whistleblower told Hawley. “TikTok and ByteDance are functionally the same company. They use the same data analysis tools and chat apps, and managers are in constant contact.”

Hawley noted that TikTok has repeatedly claimed that members of the Chinese Communist Party cannot access American user data but said “it seems more and more likely that they do” with the new accusations about the company’s activities. The lawmaker cited an earlier report from Forbes which said ByteDance planned to track the location of specific American citizens. (Read more from “TikTok Whistleblower Says Chinese Communist Party Can Access American User Data” HERE)

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Xi Jinping: U.S. Global Conspiracy Against China Causing ‘Unprecedented Severe Challenges’

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Chinese dictator Xi Jinping told a panel of Communist Party officials on Monday that America and its Western allies were executing a conspiracy to ensure “all-round containment” of his country, which has resulted in “severe challenges.”

Xi’s remarks, appearing in the Chinese-language version of the state-run Xinhua News Agency, reportedly occurred at a panel presentation related to the ongoing “two sessions,” the annual gatherings of China’s two legislative bodies, the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). It preceded an extended press conference on Tuesday by Foreign Minister Qin Gang, who repeated much of Xi’s warnings about the United States and suggested that confronting China’s genocidal acts, wholesale intellectual property theft, or other international malfeasance could result in war.

The “two sessions,” completely dominated by the Communist Party, typically rubber-stamp policy proposals from Xi and hash out the specifics of federal-level funding appropriations. The lawmakers use the meeting to address the nation’s most prominent domestic problems. This year, participants are expected, as per Chinese state media reports, to dedicate much of their time to enacting policies that encourage women to have more children, as the nation’s birth rate threatens long-term economic prospects. . .

Xi reportedly predicted that the “risks and challenges” posed by the Western conspiracy would “only increase and become more severe” over time.

Xi’s message to the CPPCC contained much of the same language, encouraging lawmakers to “have the courage to fight as the country faces profound and complex changes in both the domestic and international landscape,” according to Singapore’s Channel News Asia. Xi also encouraged lawmakers to come up with policies that make China’s economy as independent – and thus not beholden to human rights or other sanctions – as possible. (Read more from “Xi Jinping: U.S. Global Conspiracy Against China Causing ‘Unprecedented Severe Challenges’” HERE)

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